Alistair Cooke Quotes

Don't let anyone tell you that America's best days are behind her - that the American spirit has been vanquished. We've seen it triumph too often in our lives to stop believing in it now.

If you elect me president, we will have a president that believes America is the greatest country in the world and we will have a president that acts like it.

I spend a good portion of my dinner-party conversation defending America because no matter what the political agenda, it's still a fantastic, amazing place.

I'm not a pessimist. I do believe that in some way we don't understand, God has a hand in things and it will all work out for America. Our money says In God We Trust. And we are the best country, aren't we?

I believe in the great spirit and intelligence of Americans.

I have never lost faith in America's essential goodness and greatness.

I really believe that even with all of our problems, we're still the best nation in the world. The idea of the United States is why millions of people want to come here every year. The reality is sometimes different, and we certainly have many things to fix, but I really believe that we have in our national DNA the ability to be a great nation that leads the way to progress.

I believe in America, and I still do.

When did America forget that it's America?

A lot of liberals don't believe in American exceptionalism, but it doesn't mean they don't love America.

A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to its own god.

Donald Trump believes in America, he believes in its people. He believes in its promise, is very liberating and you see that when you're with him privately, you see it publicly.

How can we not believe in the greatness of America? How can we not do what is right and needed to preserve this last best hope of man on Earth? After all our struggles to restore America, to revive confidence in our country, hope for our future - after all our hard-won victories earned through the patience and courage of every citizen - we cannot, must not, and will not turn. We will finish our job. How could we do less? We're Americans.

Would a serious country so completely lose perspective on its own past that it would entertain the idea that the nation was founded on slavery, rather than on the ideals that have made it a beacon to the rest of the world? And would a serious country think it appropriate to teach its children that the nation’s past is best understood as a parade of horrors, to which the most appropriate response is not pride but lacerating shame? … Nobody wants an account of the American past that is sanitized. We are all too aware of our many faults, and most of us understand the importance of owning up to them. But what we have wanted and needed instead is an account that places those faults in proper perspective—that understands them in much the same way that we understand every flawed but admirable person we have ever known and loved. We need to become a serious country again. And to do that, we need to believe in ourselves again, believe in the reason we have been placed here, as a land of hope for a world that needs hope more than ever. We need to understand that a world without America will be immeasurably diminished, both in material and spiritual terms, and that we have no choice but to live up to the responsibilities that come with our many blessings. Our history can be an enormous resource in that endeavor. The work will not be easy. … But it will be much harder to live with ourselves, and with the rebuke of the future, should we shrink from the challenge. And once we understand what is at stake, we may feel a certain exhilaration that comes of knowing what is being demanded of us.

There's something almost adolescent about Whitman's paean to everything that was and remains good about America.

What we can borrow from Ronald Reagan... is that great sense of optimism. He led by building on the strengths of America, not running America down.

To the world, you are America.

I believe in the greatness of our people.

And I think Americans are phenomenal people.

The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America.

America is good enough for us.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

The country is the people.

Don't sell America short.

I want no criticism of America at my table. The Americans criticize themselves more than enough.